Into the disputed question of the parentage of Pamela it is not our business to enter. Suffice it to say that in the common belief she was regarded as the daughter of the Duke of Orleans, the notorious Egalité, and Madame de Genlis, the Governess of the Orleans children. On the other hand, Madame de Genlis asserted that Pamela was the daughter of a poor English woman named Mary Simms, who had married a gentleman of good family called Seymour,[[80]] and fled with him, from the displeasure of his family, to Fogo in Newfoundland. Here their little daughter Nancy was born, and here shortly after the young husband died. His widow returned to England, and settled down in Christ Church, where the extraordinary beauty and fascination of her little girl attracted the attention of a Mr. Forth. Mr. Forth was accustomed to buy horses in England for his Grace of Orleans, but recently he had received another commission: to look out for a little English girl, to be educated with the Orleans children, and to speak English with them. Mary Simms was very poor, and her desire to keep her child with her was not strong enough to stand in the way of the brilliant provision thus promised her. Accordingly, Mr. Forth was soon able to announce to his royal patron that he was sending him “the handsomest mare and the prettiest little girl in all England.”
[80]. It has been pointed out by Madden that in the civil marriage contract of Pamela and Lord Edward, the bride’s father is stated to have been a William Berkley, while in the religious contract of the same date (Tournai, December 17th, 1792) Pamela is entered as the daughter of William de Brixey.
All we know with certainty of Pamela’s[[81]] “origin” is that at a very early age she made her appearance in the Convent of Bellechasse, whither Madame de Genlis had retired to devote herself to the education of the children of the Duke and Duchess of Orleans, and that until her marriage with Lord Edward in December, 1792, she was the constant companion of the young princes and their sister, and shared that remarkable and original system of education, which Madame de Genlis—one of the most gifted educationists of France, the country of educationists—had devised for her pupils.
[81]. The name Pamela was borrowed by Madame de Genlis, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the novels of Samuel Richardson, from the heroine of the most famous of them.
M. Emile Faguet has discovered in the pedagogy of Madame de Genlis the origin of all modern education—in its theories, its practices, its tendencies. “With some of its defects,” he admits, but “wanting most of these defects,” as he also claims: “an education, directed towards the true, as well as to the beautiful, paying much attention to history, modern languages, Realien, the study of the most important new discoveries, as well as the literary masterpieces of ancient and modern times.”
It seems to us, as we study this education in its results—that is to say in the character of the pupils who were formed by it—that some of the defects of our modern education were more inherent in Madame de Genlis’s system than M. Faguet is willing to admit. Lady Sarah Napier, with her shrewd woman’s wit, has perhaps formed a truer estimate of it. In a letter written to her friend, Lady Susan O’Brien, shortly after Lord Edward’s marriage to Pamela, she says: “Your account of M. Sillery (i.e. Madame de Genlis) and her élèves answers my idea of her, all pleasing to appearance, and nothing sound within her heart, whatever may be so in the young minds whom she can and does of course easily deceive. I hope we have got our lovely little niece time enough out of her care to have acquired all the perfections of her education, which are certainly great, as she has a very uncommon, clever, active mind and turns it to the most useful purposes, and I trust our pretty little Sylph (for she is not like other mortals) has not a tincture of all the double-dealing, cunning, false reasoning, and lies with which M. S. is forced to gloss over a very common ill-conduct, because she will set herself above others in virtue, and she happens to be no better than her neighbours.”
The great fault we seem to find in Madame de Genlis as an educationist is that she failed to make true religion the foundation of it. Though she insisted on devoting a large portion of her pupils’ time-table to the study of the Catechism, and reserved for herself, as the most important of her duties, their preparation for First Communion, and their religious instruction, she failed signally to make them realise that they were created and placed in this world for one end and aim only: “to know God, to love Him, and serve Him, and by that means to gain everlasting life.” The system of morality which she taught them was founded less on the knowledge and love and service of God than on that curious code of external ethics called Les Convenances. The strange thing about this was that she, herself, was an ardent, not to say a noisy, protagonist of religion, and enjoyed nothing more than a tilt with the Philosophes. But, somehow, one thinks of religion as an element a little fortuitous in the heterogeneous collection of ingredients which went to the making of her character—and when she failed to make it the foundation of her own conception of life, it is not to be wondered at that she failed equally in respect of her pupils. Louis Philippe and Madame Adélaïde were worse than indifferent in the matter of religion. And it is sufficient to say of Pamela that though she was reconciled to the Church before her death, and died, as one has reason to believe, truly penitent, she seems to have given up the practice of her religion immediately after her marriage with Lord Edward, without the slightest qualm of conscience.
“Les Convenances,” external appearances, it was these Madame de Genlis kept steadily in view in educating her pupils. The consequence was that she made them think of life as an act played on a stage for the benefit of spectators, whose applause determined the success of the actor, rather than a solemn business between God and each lonely human soul. To have their bodies trained to the highest degree of strength, and grace, agility and efficiency; to have their minds adorned with all useful and agreeable knowledge, to be adepts and connoisseurs of the fine arts: painting, and music, poetry and literature—this was the educational ideal she set before herself. If the hearts of her pupils withered a little under the neglect which they necessarily suffered—if the lessons of “love, and pain and death” were missing from this positive and modernist education, who can wonder that the results in poor Pamela’s case at least were disastrous?
Nevertheless, there were in Madame de Genlis’s system, as Lady Sarah Napier admits, sufficient “perfections” to make it worth our while to study it in a certain detail, in the hope of finding something in it to suit our own educational needs. The books in which she expounds her system (Adèle et Théodore, Leçons d’une Gouvernante, etc.) exercised a tremendous influence on a generation of parents much more interested in the education of their children than their present-day successors. We learn from Lady Sophia Fitzgerald that her mother, the Duchess of Leinster, admired “all the writings of Madame de Genlis to the greatest degree,” and was often bantered by Lord Edward (who little suspected in what a relation he was one day to stand to the educationist) over her engouement. (He, for his part, pronounced her Plans d’Education all perfect nonsense). Lady Sophia, herself, began to re-read Adèle et Théodore (which she had first read about eight or nine years previously) after her brother, Lord Edward, brought home Pamela as his bride. She pays a pretty compliment to Pamela while she makes a record of this intention of hers in her diary: “Knowing what a charming, engaging little creature Lady Edward is, I think I shall be more interested than ever, and give more attention to all she [i.e. Madame de Genlis] says upon Education.”